


On a Scale of 1 to Multitasking

by nokochaoli



Category: Green Lantern (Comics), Justice League of America (Comics), The Flash (Comics)
Genre: Gen, Hal's space anecdotes, M/M, an incremental approach to plot, fluff with plot, general verbal shenanigans, hunger-induced confessions, impeccable timing of Windows updates, psuedo-science I spent way to long researching, stress related frustration
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-18
Updated: 2018-03-18
Packaged: 2019-04-04 09:31:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14017314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nokochaoli/pseuds/nokochaoli
Summary: When it rains, it pours. Barry takes on too much at once, but it's a good thing Hal's there to make sure he takes a break.





	On a Scale of 1 to Multitasking

“There’s been a low level of fear and unrest throughout the Gotham City for the past few days.” Bruce hardly waits for the door to fully open before he’s ducking his head and stepping through the threshold. “Just in time for Luthor to drop off the radar.”

Barry’s trailing a few steps behind, frowning in thought. He’s not really seeing any sort of correlation or causation here, but the intonation in Bruce’s voice seems to suggest differently. Maybe he’s just not seeing it because he’s still thinking about the reports he’d left behind in the lab. “So,... he’s been biding his time?”

“No.” Then, after a beat, he adds, “I don’t think so.” Stopping by one of the computers, he leans over to type some series of commands. “I think he’s orchestrating it.”

“Orchestra-” Barry cuts himself off, trying to mentally backpedal and get back on track with whatever train of thought Bruce seems to be currently riding. “But, I mean… there’s been a lot of bad news circulating lately. Wouldn’t that be enough to cause - what was it? - a ‘low level of fear and unrest?’”

Bruce keeps his focus trained on the computer in front of him, the line of his jaw set and unmoving.

“Wh- you think Luthor’s behind the news?”

“Worse.” Bruce finishes the last few commands, punctuating them with the enter key and pivoting on his heel to turn towards Barry. Finally, he meets Barry’s gaze.

Barry stares back, echoing emptily, “Worse?”

Bruce inhales slowly. “I think Scarecrow and his fear toxin may be involved.”

“Wh-” Barry blinks rapidly.

“Flash,” Bruce claps a hand on his shoulder, gripping tightly. “We have to put a stop to this before it gets out of hand. I’ll need you to run some tests. See if there’s-”

Barry opens his mouth to speak, until he realizes Bruce is still talking.

“-any trace of the fear toxin in the city’s water supply. Or anything related to the fear toxin. It could be a modified version.” He drops his hand. “I’ve sent you the coordinates that should yield the best samples.”

“Samples?” If it’s testing for trace elements in the water supply… “But that’s a protein-based toxin. You’d need at least a mass spectrometer to accurately test for that.”

“Why not?”

“ _Mass_ spectrometry?”

Bruce blinks, not seeming to deign that with a response.

Barry laughs nervously, the sound reverberating through the Watchtower halls. “First off, we’d need access to one-”

“We have a one.”

“-and I’m pretty sure that Forrest called dibs on ours for-” He has to stop himself, taking a step back and reevaluating Bruce’s body language. “We have one?”

“We have one.” The corners of his mouth lift ever so slightly.

“Here?”

“Installed it yesterday.”

Barry tries to wrap his head around the cost, but then he recalls that this is Bruce. “Of course you did.” He rubs at the back of his neck, trying to dispel the tension that seems to be settling in. “So we could test the city’s water supply.”

“Precisely.” After a pause, he adds, “Well, you’ll test the water supply-”

“Right-” Barry stops once again, as Bruce continues talking.

“-while I’ll collect more information.”

“Like,” he pauses, making sure he’s not unintentionally interrupting. “Right now?”

Batman simply stares at him, cape uncannily still.

“I just- well…”

“What is it?”

“I mean, those kinds of tests take a while to set up, and there’s a mountain of reports that are due in…” he trails off, losing all the steam behind his words as soon as he sees Bruce’s face. Or, well, what he can see of Bruce’s face behind the cowl. His reports might be due before the morning, but if there is something up with Gotham City’s water supply, Barry would be kicking himself for putting off double checking.

“I-I suppose I can just grab some work to keep busy while I wait for the test results.”

Bruce’s shoulders drop fractionally. “Good. Because we need the results as soon as possible.”

* * *

The deep hum of the spectrometer running in the background makes for nice white noise as Barry sorts flips through his notebook. When he finds the page he’s looking for - completely covered in barely legible chicken scratch - he sets it down beside the laptop he’s got open on the laboratory table. After he skims over his notes once more, he turns back to the open report and starts tweaking the introduction.

Minutes later, his phone buzzes in his pocket. Just as he’s reaching for it, though, the spectrometer also goes off. Frowning slightly, he glances at his phone as he stands and crosses the room to the instrument.

It’s Iris. While it seems like just a standard greeting, Barry suspects there’s some sort of deeper reason behind it. He pockets his phone and puts that thought on the back-burner, glancing over the new data from the spectrometer. Unfortunately, he’s gone through several samples from Gotham City’s water supply, but nothing seems to be entirely out of the ordinary. He’d even gone as far to collect several samples from the same sources to account for variations in the polypeptide chain.

He sighs, going through the motions of saving the data and glancing at the water samples he has left to test. Shifting his weight onto one foot, he digs his phone out of his pocket once more, quickly typing a response. When that’s sent, he sets about preparing the next sample for processing.

By the time he’s done and got the instrument set up to run the test, Iris has sent him three more messages. There it is: apparently she’s concerned about Wally.

Barry frowns, sitting down on the stool in front of the laptop and staring at his phone. He reads the messages several times over. He starts to type out a response, but then rethinks it through. He doesn’t want to make the situation worse by sounding too concerned, but he certainly can’t think of much else to say. So, he ends up retyping his first response anyway.

He sets his phone down beside his laptop, gaze lingering for a moment before returning to his report. Skimming through the document, he tries his very best to think of all the possible ways someone, namely a prosecutor, could interpret his own words. There’s no way that paragraph on the soil analysis will do with the way it’s currently worded. He’ll have to rewrite the whole-

“Fancy meeting you here,” Hal’s soft tenor voice floats in from the doorway, lazy syllables rolling easily through the tense atmosphere.

“Oh,” Barry starts, pulled from his thoughts. He blinks up at Hal, trying to think of something better to say, but nothing’s coming to mind. So he settles for a very bland, “Hey.”

Looking back to the laptop, he tabs through his documents until he reaches the soil analysis reports, opening them up side by side. He squints at the detailed data, sighing. It’s much easier when he has more than one monitor to compare the details.

From the edge of his peripheral vision, Barry sees Hal stroll into the room leisurely. When he crosses the distance to the table, he nudges the wooden stool next to Barry with his toe.

Barry frowns at the screen, tabbing over to the open DNA report. His eyes dart across the data swiftly, but the computer won’t scroll down fast enough.

Hal sits down on the stool unceremoniously, leaning over onto the table. He rests his head on his fist, letting the silence unfold between them. Barry practically feels the intent stare Hal was most likely levelling him, making the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. 

“Why, I’m fine, thank you,” Hal says, the rise and fall of the thinly veiled sarcasm in his voice cutting through Barry’s thoughts. The feigned politeness in his tone is, for lack of a better word, practiced. “And how have you been?”

Barry tabs over to the open word document and starts typing before he can lose his train of thought. “Sorry,” he responds automatically. His phone buzzes beside his computer, vibrations reverberating through the table to his fingertips on the keyboard. His eyes flick over to the phone briefly. After he’s finished wrapping up the paragraph in his report, he reaches out to the phone and glances over the message from Iris.

Hal shifts in his seat, catching Barry’s attention from the corner of his eye.

That’s right. He hadn’t actually answered Hal’s question. He has to mentally rewind the conversation a bit before recalling exactly what Hal asked in the first place. “Good,” he answers quickly, typing out a brief response to Iris on his phone.

As soon as he sends it, he sets it back down on the table, blue eyes flicking up to meet Hal’s gaze. The raised eyebrow and skepticism radiating from his expression makes Barry pause, feeling slightly guilty. He offers Hal a half-hearted shrug, settling for a more truthful answer. “Multitasking.”

Just as he finishes, the timer for the spectrometer goes off with a quiet beep. Barry closes his eyes for a brief moment before standing to go take care of that as well.

He hears Hal shift in his seat, sighing roughly. “And we’re down to one word answers.” His tone seems to float loftily in the air, but Barry thinks maybe he can hear an edge of irritation lying in wait underneath. After a beat, though, Hal adds, “Also, I’m not sure how ‘multitasking’ fits into the whole ‘well-being’ spectrum.”

Barry finishes setting up the next test, pressing a few buttons. When he turns around, Hal’s leaning back with a relaxed smirk, legs stretched out and crossed at the ankle. So perhaps Barry had been misinterpreting the irritation in that tone.

He sits down at his laptop, skimming over the last few paragraphs or so and sighs, glancing at the clock and feeling the tension in his shoulders creep up to his neck. There can’t be any margin of error, and he can’t leave any wiggle room for the prosecutor to mislead the case. It’s a very delicate balancing act, taking data, grammar, and interpretation into account.

Just as he’s about to tab through his documents once more, he realizes he’s neglected to answer Hal yet again. “Somewhere between busy and…” he frowns, blue eyes glancing up in Hal’s general direction, “...really busy?”

He turns his attention back to the screen, glancing through the open data files and once again at his own handwritten notes for good measure. He goes back to the word document, but when he starts typing, all the letters appear out of order. He’s typing too fast. Inhaling sharply, he erases the line and starts over. This time, he gets about halfway through the sentence before the punctuation is intersecting words with inverted spellings and letters missing altogether.

“ _Dammit_.” He uses the mouse to highlight the offending line, deleting it entirely. He leans over, elbow landing on the table hard and pinching the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger.

He counts his breaths.

His phone buzzes. _Twice._

“Say you and me go take a break?” Hal poses the question gently, his tone expertly neutral. “Maybe grab something to eat?”

He desperately wants to say yes. Probably should say yes. But that’d just be one more task on his ever-increasing to-do list, wouldn’t it? He’d be grabbing food and swapping stories. And all the while, the spectrometry tests would have to be put on hold, and he’d end up having to finish the report in the wee hours of the morning. That’d inevitably result in him leaving some sort of phrasing the prosecution could potentially use to their advantage. And as much as he dislikes the idea of possible criminals roaming free where they could theoretically do more potential harm, he also loathes seeing an innocent bystander incarcerated simply due to haste.

Not to mention Iris’ concern about Wally. That’s an entirely different dilemma in need of some delicate attention.

Taking a break now wouldn’t just put all of that on hold. It’d set an entire avalanche into motion. One that Barry’s been trying to hold off all week. Trying, and slowly failing.

He breathes deeply, exhaling slowly and running his hand over his face. “Sorry, Hal. Maybe in a little bit. I’d like to wrap up at least one of these things first.”

There’s a tense silence in the wake of Hal’s lack of a response. The tension has Barry looking up from his hand, glancing in the direction of his friend.

Hal’s frowning at him, but the precise expression in his eyes seems like it’s on the corner or three separate thoughts. Barry can’t read if he’s irritated, disappointed, or just done. Though, it is Hal. It could easily be either all or even none of the above.

The unreadable expression dissipates quickly as Hal shrugs lightly. “Suit yourself.” He pushes up from the table to stand, running a hand roughly through his hair. He pauses to give Barry a slow, half-hearted salute with a lazy flick of his wrist. Then he’s walking towards the door, heels dragging on the tile.

Barry sighs, placing his palms on the edge of the table and pushing back just enough that he’s balancing the stool on two of its legs. He rocks it back and forth, feeling the tension in his forearms build and release slowly. The very least he could do is make the most of his decision.

He glances at the spectrometer, then at the clock on the lower corner of the screen on his laptop. He calculates roughly how long it would take for the instrument to finish.

He lets the stool fall forward, wooden legs clattering on the tile as the tension melts from his arms.

Grabbing his phone from the table, he messages Iris to let her know he’ll check up on Wally as soon as he can catch a break from work.

Then, instead of going back to the word document, he flips open to a blank page in his notebook. It takes him a moment to find where he last put his pen, somewhere over by the spectrometer. He gives one last cursory glance over his sub-par paragraph about soil sample analysis before tabbing over to the soil analysis reports. Then, he starts to handwrite an entirely new paragraph in his notebook, one with hopefully more precise wording. When he’s finished, he makes sure to take his time typing the newly written paragraph into his report.

He continues to pick through the weaker points of his reports. When he’s part-way through handwriting the conclusion, though, his laptop screen goes stark blue, and Barry swears he can feel his heart skip a beat.

_Configuring Windows Updates - 0% complete. Do not turn off your computer._

No, no, _no, No_. When did he last save? How much had he rewritten since then? How much would he have to try to salvage? Why would anyone program a computer to do anything like that? Didn’t they used to ask before updating? Why didn’t it warn him first? _Had_ it warned him first? Was it a setting he’d forgotten to change? He really should have thoroughly checked the settings beforehand.

There’s _nothing_ he can do now, but wait for the computer to finish installing updates and assess the damage done. He plants both elbows firmly on the table, cradling his head in his hands and letting out a long, frustrated groan.

“Well, _that_ doesn’t sound too good.” Hal’s voice drifts through the air. No matter how friendly his tone of voice sounds, Barry can’t bring himself to lift his head from his hands.

That is, until he feels something cold and wet placed on the back of his neck.

“Jesus Christ!” Barry ducks forward so quickly he almost overbalances. “Hal, that’s _cold_!”

“Yeah, I know.” He’s practically grinning. After a beat, his expression softens just a bit. “Usually tastes better that way.” He offers the juice to Barry.

Barry reaches out to take it, only now noticing the slight tremor in his hands. Glancing at his watch, he realizes he’s been working in the lab for several hours now without a single break. With a deep breath, he tries to twist off the cap of the orange juice, but the bottle almost slips from his hands because of the condensation.

“Here,” Hal offers, standing a little bit too close. He takes the bottle, twisting it open easily. “Wouldn’t want it to spill, I’m assuming.” He nods his head to the notes and laptop on Barry’s left.

“Thanks,” he says begrudgingly.

Hal shrugs half-heartedly and takes a seat next to Barry, leaning back onto the lab table with one fluid motion. “Been thinking a lot about orange juice lately.”

Barry raises an eyebrow. “Really? Why?”

Hal shoots him a smirk like he was waiting for that question. “Why not? When you’re stuck overseeing negotiations for a trade agreement and your presence is mostly just part of the protocol, it’s easy for your mind to wander.”

“That exciting, huh?”

“‘Bout as exciting as listening to coworkers discuss door knob options.”

“Riveting,” Barry responds, deadpan.

Hal gives him a brief disapproving glare at the poor excuse for a pun before continuing. “They want this in exchange for that, but they won’t give them that until they get their word about this. And then,” Hal lifts a finger, eyebrow raised to emphasize his point, “the numbers come into the discussion.”

“Not a fan of numbers?”

Hal purses his lips and shakes his head slowly.

“Well, _I_ like numbers,” Barry mutters, glancing down at his mostly empty orange juice.

“Not like this, I promise you.” Hal leans forward, resting an elbow on his knee. “These numbers’ll drag the discussion on for _days_. The difference between 10% and 12% suddenly becomes filibuster fodder, and all the while you have nothing else to drink except some glass of bizarre orange _junk_.”

Barry sits back, smiling slightly now that he sees where this is going. “Well, it’s nice of them to make sure you have something to drink.”

“Yeah, no.” His hand sweeps across the air in front of him, dismissing the idea entirely. “That stuff has the gall to look and feel exactly like orange juice. But it doesn’t taste like orange juice.”

“No?”

“No. It tastes like beets. Beets, parsley, ass, and just a hint of hand sanitizer.”

“ _Hand sanitizer_?”

Hal nods. “Just right at the top so it punches you in the nose right as you’re trying to choke it down.”

Barry shudders involuntarily. “You know, you don’t have to describe it so in-depth.”

“Oh, but I do,” Hal says firmly. “That stuff is a betrayal to all things orange.” After a pause, he adds with a shrug, “And so, orange juice.”

“Orange juice,” Barry repeats, tilting the plastic bottle in a mock-toast before finishing it off.

Without missing a beat, Hal asks softly, “Feeling better?”

Barry sighs, turning the empty bottle around in his hands. “Yeah… Sorry, it’s just been one thing on top of another.”

“You realize you can say no, right?”

Barry frowns at the plastic bottle in his hands. He’s considered the notion, but that thought process always immediately spirals into what’ll happen when things are left undone. If there is something going on with Luthor, that’ll lead into something bigger if left unchecked for the next few days. And that will eat into the time Barry might need for finishing the big projects at work for this week. Not to mention how he’s going to find time to check in on Wally. True, things might be snowballing now, but it’s much better than an out-of-control avalanche.

“C’mon. Say no to Bats. I have a mighty need to see the look on his face when that happens.”

“No.”

“Yeah. Just like that. But to him.”

“Nope. Not happening.”

“Oh, come on. How come you’re always telling me no, but you never even think of the word when it comes to Batman?”

He raises an eyebrow at Hal. Barry should continue the banter, like a good game of verbal racquetball. But he _wants_ to tell Hal the real answer - that it’s because he’ll understand. Even if Hal doesn’t agree, he at least understands. But even the sheer thought of saying that out loud makes Barry blush far too easily. Barry usually blushes easily, given his complexion, but his current low blood sugar certainly isn’t helping any.

Unfortunately, he can’t come up with a witty comeback, so Barry just settles for “That’s not true.”

“Yu-huh. And that’s why you’re _totally_ not blushing like the teacher’s pet.”

“I am not.” Great, now that Hal’s pointed it out, Barry can just feel it getting worse. His face heats up. Scratch everything he thought earlier about Hal understanding. He takes it back.

“Face don’t lie, man.”

“That’s not what I-” He throws the empty bottle into the recycling a little harder than intended.

Hal raises an eyebrow. Barry knows that look. Hell is freezing over before he drops the subject.

“You understand.”

“What?” Hal asks, his tone dead flat.

“If I say no. You get it. You get the context.”

Hal stares at him.

Barry both can’t really stand to meet his gaze, but he certainly can’t look away. “I don’t have to try.” He’s making less and less sense, but he can’t be bothered to clutter up the truth with a bunch of unnecessary qualifiers.

With a deep breath, Hal lays a hand on his shoulder. “Alright. You and me, pal? We’re gonna get something decent to eat. So, save the hunger-drunk confessions for another day, yeah?”

He sighs softly. “Just give me a second to make sure the spectrometer’s okay to stay idle for a while.” There’s an unspoken line somewhere. Barry’s sure he’s unintentionally blurred that line. Some part of him feels like he should care, but for some reason he can’t bring himself to realize why.

“Sure thing.” After a beat. “How do burgers sound?”

“Like heaven.”

“Well, alright then.”

Maybe the why doesn’t matter so much after all.

**Author's Note:**

> I spent way too long trying to research various forensic scientific methods for water analysis. Then trying to figure out how one would detect various toxins and whatnot. And well, I've mostly studied Applied Linguistics and Music Theory... so if there's anything amiss with the science in this, please please _please_ feel free to tell me.
> 
> Also trying towards more plot-based/longer fics. Getting there slowly.


End file.
